japplet param

I am new to Java applets and therefore japplets as well.
I am working on a project that we want to get the params from the page
the applet tag is on. I have looked at

the various examples and they are not working for the application I am
working on however when I make my own

simple sample it works just fine.

This is the error I get when trying it in the project:

java.lang.NullPointerException
at java.applet.Applet.getParameter(Unknown Source)

I have read that the getParameter call should be in init and also in
the default constructor. This doesnt

seem to work however, I have tried the call in many other methods and
also calling it from a seperate class.

String s ="initial";
s = getParameter("asdf");

<param name="asdf" value="hi">


Thanks.

.